Jane Miller: UMP summer marathon tour hitting Peoria

Thursday

If it's June, it must be time for the United Midwestern Promoters Summer Nationals tour.

If it's June, it must be time for the United Midwestern Promoters Summer Nationals tour.

The 25-races-in-31-days marathon DIRTcar event makes its way to central Illinois in the coming week.

Lincoln Speedway plays host to the racers Sunday, there is a rain-out makeup at Farmer City on Monday, then the tour makes a stop at Peoria Speedway on Tuesday.

Gates open at Peoria at 5 p.m. The Summer Nationals purse is $6,000 to win. Modifieds also race with a $1,000 to win and Street Stocks also are on the program.

The tour began June 11 at Brownstown, Ind. There have been three rainouts (Highland, Charleston and Farmer City) and two scheduled off days since the tour began.

In the eight races held so far, Dennis Erb Jr. has won at Quad-City Raceway and Belle-Clair (Belleville), Billy Moyer has won at Kankakee and Clarksville, Tenn.; and Jeep VanWormer has won at Brownstown and Tri-State (Haubstadt, Ind.).

VanWormer is the defending champion of the Peoria race.

The other two winners this year were Eric Smith at Kamp Motor Speedway in Boswell, Ind., and Rodney Melvin at Charleston makeup race.

The tour concludes July 11 at Oakshade Raceway in Ohio. Other area stops are at Spoon River on July 8 and LaSalle Speedway on July 9.

Racer Jason Plumer is promoting the race at Peoria again this year.

"This is probably my ninth or 10th year," said Plumer. "I've always had an interest in promoting. I've been racing 20 years myself and this is probably my last year, but I've always been interested in the promotion side."

Plumer rents the Speedway from owner Sherrie Hamilton for this event and the two have had conversations about Plumer buying the track.

"We just talked about it again a couple of months ago," Plumer said. "It's not out of the realm of possibility."

Scenic Iowa

The IndyCar race at Iowa Speedway gets better every year.

If only they could do something about the weather.

I've gone over to the race, and to visit a college friend, all three years and every time, on the way over, I've dealt with tornado warnings or a severe thunderstorm.

It rained like crazy Sunday morning, but by the start of the race, the weather was good.

Dario Franchitti won his second race in as many tries at the Newton track and Hideki Mutoh got his second consecutive podium finish.

And it was Mutoh who delivered the quote of the weekend, when asked if he minded being under the radar at Andretti Green.

While he didn't answer the question exactly, he did speak glowingly of each of his teammates:

"T.K. (Tony Kanaan) has a lot of experience and he is a really funny guy," he said. "And Danica (Patrick) sometimes seems, you know, angry, but she's not. She's really focusing on winning races. But I like her very much, too.

"And with Marco (Andretti), I go out to dinner or sometimes, you know I have night life with him. We're having fun, yeah."

The race was a sellout even after additional seats were added, with an announced crowd of 40,142. The track has the capability to expand to 60,000 seats.

It's a fun place to see a race. The Nationwide Series visits there for the first time on Aug. 1 and the Camping World Truck Series races there Sept. 5.

New colors

Lenox, usually an associate sponsor on Jeff Burton's Chevrolet, steps up as the primary for this weekend at New Hampshire.

The race is sponsored by Lenox Industrial Tools.

Burton's paint scheme will be red, white and blue instead of the usual Cat yellow and black. Caterpillar will be back next weekend.

Burton has won three times at New Hampshire.

Jane Miller is the Peoria Journal Star motorsports columnist. She can be reached at jmiller@pjstar.com.

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